While trying to address my hair's issues from an nutritional standpoint I'm also looking at changing my care routine and product choices. I currently wash and condition my hair with natural poo and con twice a week. I'm thinking I need to change that to condition it more and shampoo less. I never brush, blow dry or heat style my hair. Basically I put in my product (gel and serum) and air dry. I'm currently not using any curl-specific products and the only "bad" thing I'm using is the Giovanni serum which has the dreaded -xane and -cone.

Oh, and I color my hair with Naturtint (haven't found anything better/less toxic yet and henna made it an awful red, no matter which one I used). My natural color is dark auburn brown. I would love to let my gray grow in but am just not brave enough to do it yet and don't have what it takes to deal with the in-between phase.

For you over-40 curlies out there who are using natural products or, close-to-natural (no-sulfs, no-bens, no-perfume, etc.) products, what are your favorites for helping your curls have a nice, defined curl? It seems that many of the products I read about here have ingredients that I prefer not to use (no offense meant, I'm just one of those "hippies" who prefer to live as naturally as possible [says the hypocrite who botoxes her hideous frown lines - we all make our choices]).

Darn, this is a long post. If you've gotten this far, thank you for sticking with me and sorry to be so long-winded. I'd do just about anything to get my "old"/beautiful (Juliana Marguiles-before-she-straightened-it) hair back.